NEVADA ARTS COUNCIL NEWS RELEASE – Drawings by North Las Vegas artist Marylou Evans are the latest creations featured at the Nevada Legislature at LXS, the Legislative eXhibition Series gallery in Carson City. Open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. adjacent to the Caucus Deli, the LXS displays Evans’ work April 29 through May 17. Managed by the Artist Services Program of the Nevada Arts Council, the Legislative eXhibition Series has provided a spotlight on the Silver State’s breadth of contemporary and folk artists during the biennial session since 1985.
“The LXS Gallery engages legislators and the public in discussions about art – a topic not often referenced during daily floor sessions and committee meetings,” said Susan Boskoff, executive director of the Arts Council.
The work shown in Evans’ exhibit “In My Wildest Dreams” was born of her fascination with the inner workings of the brain and memory. “I went through an illness, and looking at the MRIs and realizing it was the interior of my brain and realizing how beautiful it was, how the blood vessels intertwined contributed to my thought process and made me more aware of the mind-body connection,” she said.
Each piece is made of several sheets of mylar, a thin transparent paper, upon which Evans lays washes of acrylic paint and graphite, sometimes peeling paint off and scratching back into the washes, building the depth of the composition with each new sheet. She compares the peeling and scratching to the brain of a person undergoing psychological therapy and the real physical changes in the brain that result from the treatment.
“The exhibit explores the idea of layers of synaptic connections and layers of consciousness built from our personal experiences, which form our personality,” she said.
Evans was born in Columbus, GA, but has called Las Vegas home since 1990. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she studied painting and drawing. She currently works as gallery director of Left of Center Art Gallery in North Las Vegas and teaches part-time at the College of Southern Nevada.
The Nevada Arts Council, a division of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, is the agency charged with ensuring that state and national funds support cultural activity and encourage participation in the arts throughout Nevada. In addition to providing hundreds of grants to arts and community-based organizations, schools, artists and local municipalities throughout the state, the Arts Council coordinates a variety of statewide programs and activities such as the annual Poetry Out Loud recitation competition for high-school aged students, traveling exhibits, artist residencies, workshops and cultural assessments. For more information, please visit the department’s website at nac.nevadaculture.org/.
